With the 2015 Boston Marathon coming Monday, the world’s attention will be on the 30,000 runners as they endure the highs and lows of running 26.2 miles.

Hiding your shortcomings is virtually impossible in long-distance running. More than in any other athletic endeavor, a marathon forces you to confront weaknesses head on, exposing your limitations as well as your strengths. That’s something that marathon-running corporate leaders know well, a group that includes T-Mobile chief executive John Legere.

Dambisa Moyo, an adviser to big businesses including Barclays PLC and soon to be two-time marathoner (she’ll be in the pack in London on April 26) explains what corporate leaders can learn from a long run. Read More »

Expats are good at preparing for their next exciting post, whether it’s in Burundi or Boston. They’ll study the language, find the best place to live, read up on the food, the climate, and the currency. But the deep, dark secret of the expat experience is that coming home – repatriation – can be even harder than leaving. Read More »

Alec Cairns speaks with a representative of Chipotle at a youth job fair in 2012.

Matthew Staver/Bloomberg News

It’s rough out there for teenagers who want to work.

The unemployment rate for American teens—which counts young people who are available to work and looked for jobs in the prior four weeks— was 17.5% last month.

While it could be that employers view teens as less dependable than adults, workforce experts say the pre-employment tests required of applicants for a vast number of low-skill jobs have become a big obstacle for teens.

Two years ago Commonwealth Corporation, a workforce-development agency in Massachusetts, studied why youth employment rates had fallen sharply in that state. Pre-hire assessments were a significant and surprising obstacle, said Nancy Snyder, the group’s president.

As the hiring market heats up, employers are posting—and filling—more jobs. Employers plan to hire 9.6% more new graduates than last year, according to a survey of 162 U.S. employers released Wednesday by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Most (55.9%) employers plan to increase hiring, while 11.8% plan to have hiring remain constant and 32.2% to decrease hires, the survey said. Employers said they posted an average of 148 openings, up nearly 50% from last year.

In turn, the job market is no longer quite as tight for jobseekers. Employers received an average of 23.4 applications per posting, down from 28.4 responses per posting from last year, according to the survey. Read More »

If you’ve applied for a customer-service job in the last few years, it is likely you were asked whether you agree or disagree with statements like these:

I hardly ever finish things on time.

I have taken merchandise from work.

I usually won’t go out of my way to help someone else.

The “right” answers seem pretty obvious. That’s why personality tests like these can be gamed, either through common sense (it isn’t hard to guess what an employer wants to hear) or through the distribution of unauthorized cheat sheets.

But a new breed of pre-hire assessment tests is a lot harder for test-takers to outsmart, thanks to a combination of sophisticated technology, web-based distribution, and advances in behavioral science that allow firms to extract critical information about candidates through, for example, tests that force individuals to choose between two statements that are seemingly unrelated but provide more meaningful information about people’s motivations and values.

For example, as The Wall Street Journal noted in a Page One story on Monday, a test from assessment vendor Furstperson might ask applicants to call center jobs whether they agree or disagree with statements such as “I dislike yelling, but sometimes a little yelling is necessary,” or forcing people to choose the statement that best describes them from a pair like “I am the life of the party” and “I am detail-oriented.”

Skills are a big business these days. LinkedIn Corp.’s decision to buy online training platform Lynda.com for about $1.5 billion makes that point with an exclamation mark.

With employers lamenting that they can’t find enough people with high-demand digital skills, and workers increasingly expected to develop skills on their own rather than through the workplace, it’s a busy time the field of web-based training. Recent entrants include Grovo, Udemy, and Wranx, and most offer classes to individuals but make the bulk of their revenue through partnerships with corporate customers.

It’s not yet clear how LinkedIn will integrate Lynda.com’s thousands of courses, but in a blog post Thursday, Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s head of global content products, suggested that the network will try to match users with courses that fill gaps in their skill sets. Read More »

Many companies including Pepsi, Staples and Meredith have begun to offer programs geared toward improving the financial security of their employees, Rachel Feintzig reports:

Modeled after physical-wellness programs that invite employees to lose weight or undergo health screenings, financial-wellness programs include finance classes, counseling sessions and even videogames designed to help staffers pay down debt, stick to a budget and invest for their retirement.

Some commenters on the article debated the merits of such programs. While most can agree that more financial education is a general positive, the burden of such programs is up for debate. Brian Earley wrote, “Financial Literacy is not part of our public school education system. It is desperately needed as today’s young culture tends not to be aware of the importance of so many rules of the road in handling finances. So now, companies are getting involved like they do with healthcare. Who would you rather teach you about financial-wellness?”

In response to his astute observation, we’d like you to tell us: Who should be responsible for teaching financial wellness? Take our poll below. If you choose “Other,” feel free to let us know your response in the comments. Read More »

If there’s already a woman in the executive suite, it’s less likely another woman will ascend, new research finds.

iStock/Getty Images

Having a woman at the top of a company might signal that there is no room for any others.

New research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and Columbia Business School finds that a woman’s chances of landing one of a company’s five highest-paid executive jobs drop 51% if there’s already a woman on the team.

The explanation is not entirely clear, but the authors speculate that unconscious biases are at play.

“It might very well be the case that male top managers just want to check a box – there is no more effort, no more mentoring, to appoint a second woman to the top management team,” said Cristian Dezso, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s business school and an author of the study. “They are one and done.” Read More »

Harvard Business School is looking to women’s colleges for the next generation of business leaders.

The school is set this week to roll out a new recruiting program, dubbed PEEK, which targets students at women-only colleges, said Dee Leopold, the school’s head of M.B.A. admissions and financial aid. HBS will host about 70 to 80 rising juniors, rising seniors and fresh graduates from women’s colleges in June for a weekend of case studies, presentations and discussions designed to familiarize students with the M.B.A. program “at a time when they’re making decisions about next steps,” Leopold said. The average incoming HBS student is age 27 and has about four years of work experience, according to the school.

Business schools are taking steps to shore up the pipeline of qualified women candidates into their M.B.A. programs. Read More »

About At Work

Written and edited by The Wall Street Journal’s Management & Careers group, At Work covers life on the job, from getting ahead to managing staff to finding passion and purpose in the office. Tips, questions? email us.